Food Safety

A Warwickshire takeaway owner who admitted 20 food hygiene charges has been ordered to pay more than £2,000.

He was fined £1,000 with a £15 victim surcharge and ordered to pay £1,172.30 costs at Stratford Upon Avon magistrates court in May. Warwick District Council prosecuted for offences under the Food Hygiene (England) Regulations 2006 committed on 12 November 2009 and 12 January 2010.

A senior food safety inspector visited the premises in November 2010 after receiving a complaint from a member of the public and found that the takeaway was dirty and poorly maintained. There was no food safety management system in place and food handlers had been left unsupervised and untrained.

A hygiene improvement notice after noting that staff did not keep themselves clean and there was a risk of food contamination. During a revisit in January 2010, it was found that the owner had failed to comply with the earlier hygiene improvement notice, and had also failed to improve food safety standards.

The owner put in an early guilty plea which was taken into account, as well as the fact that the premises had been brought back to a satisfactory condition when sentencing.

Hygiene improvement notices to give operators a fair chance to put systems in place and to improve their standards, however, failure to comply with improvement notices to a satisfactory degree regularly leads to legal action. A spokesman for Warwick District Council commented, ‘Clearly, failure to comply with such notices cannot be tolerated and the courts regard it as a serious matter.’